Latest news with #PitchBook
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
US AgTech capital drought continues, dairy and solar sectors offer bright spots
By Mrinalika Roy (Reuters) -The U.S. AgTech sector is navigating a challenging investment climate. Yet, amid the funding downturn, some companies are carving out growth opportunities, particularly in the dairy and solar sectors. Macroeconomic headwinds, weak commodity prices and a sluggish agricultural cycle have weighed on funding and valuations in the agricultural technology sector that encompasses precision farming, biotech and data analytics, which help farmers grow food more efficiently. According to the latest PitchBook data, AgTech venture funding dropped to $1.6 billion across 137 deals in the first quarter of 2025, a nearly 25% decline in deal count and a 3.6% fall in capital compared to the previous quarter. "AgTech's challenges aren't unique. What we're seeing is part of a broader venture capital correction, particularly outside AI," said Tom Brennan, partner, McKinsey & Co. But precision farming, which uses data and tools including automation and robotics to farm more accurately, has managed to see robust investor interest, amid a labor shortage. On a trailing 12-month basis, precision agriculture registered $1.82 billion in deal value, with the 'robotics and smart field equipment' sub-sector seeing 48.5% value growth. "Roughly 40% of U.S. ag labor is likely undocumented," said McKinsey's Vasanth Ganesan. "This creates strong incentives for farmers to turn to robotics and automation." California-based Monarch Tractor has seen increased interest in its autonomous products, especially from dairy farms. "Our latest feature, autonomous feed pushing, has seen strong uptake, especially from co-ops like Dairy Farmers of America," said Monarch CEO Praveen Penmetsa. Another growth avenue for agtech firms is solar land management, which involves robotic tractors that maintain and service panels on solar farms without human intervention, demand for which is driven by U.S. utilities powering the AI data center boom. "We're already working with top North American solar developers and expect to announce major partnerships soon," Penmetsa said. Major players such as John Deere and Caterpillar are also increasing their presence in automation. "Big players entering the space signals strategic value. It suggests there's now a clearer path to exit — which was not always the case in AgTech," McKinsey's Ganesan said. Experts believe the capital markets will rebound in the second half of 2025, barring prolonged trade disruptions, benefiting established players that are ready to scale.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
US AgTech capital drought continues, dairy and solar sectors offer bright spots
By Mrinalika Roy (Reuters) -The U.S. AgTech sector is navigating a challenging investment climate. Yet, amid the funding downturn, some companies are carving out growth opportunities, particularly in the dairy and solar sectors. Macroeconomic headwinds, weak commodity prices and a sluggish agricultural cycle have weighed on funding and valuations in the agricultural technology sector that encompasses precision farming, biotech and data analytics, which help farmers grow food more efficiently. According to the latest PitchBook data, AgTech venture funding dropped to $1.6 billion across 137 deals in the first quarter of 2025, a nearly 25% decline in deal count and a 3.6% fall in capital compared to the previous quarter. "AgTech's challenges aren't unique. What we're seeing is part of a broader venture capital correction, particularly outside AI," said Tom Brennan, partner, McKinsey & Co. But precision farming, which uses data and tools including automation and robotics to farm more accurately, has managed to see robust investor interest, amid a labor shortage. On a trailing 12-month basis, precision agriculture registered $1.82 billion in deal value, with the 'robotics and smart field equipment' sub-sector seeing 48.5% value growth. "Roughly 40% of U.S. ag labor is likely undocumented," said McKinsey's Vasanth Ganesan. "This creates strong incentives for farmers to turn to robotics and automation." California-based Monarch Tractor has seen increased interest in its autonomous products, especially from dairy farms. "Our latest feature, autonomous feed pushing, has seen strong uptake, especially from co-ops like Dairy Farmers of America," said Monarch CEO Praveen Penmetsa. Another growth avenue for agtech firms is solar land management, which involves robotic tractors that maintain and service panels on solar farms without human intervention, demand for which is driven by U.S. utilities powering the AI data center boom. "We're already working with top North American solar developers and expect to announce major partnerships soon," Penmetsa said. Major players such as John Deere and Caterpillar are also increasing their presence in automation. "Big players entering the space signals strategic value. It suggests there's now a clearer path to exit — which was not always the case in AgTech," McKinsey's Ganesan said. Experts believe the capital markets will rebound in the second half of 2025, barring prolonged trade disruptions, benefiting established players that are ready to scale. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Every fusion startup that has raised over $100M
Over the last several years, fusion power has gone from the butt of jokes — always a decade away! — to an increasingly tangible and tantalizing technology that has drawn investors off the sidelines. The technology may be challenging to master and expensive to build today, but fusion promises to harness the nuclear reaction that powers the sun to generate nearly limitless energy here on Earth. If startups are able to complete commercially viable fusion power plants, then they have the potential to upend trillion-dollar markets. The bullish wave buoying the fusion industry has been driven by three advances: more powerful computer chips, more sophisticated AI, and powerful high-temperature superconducting magnets. Together, they have helped deliver more sophisticated reactor designs, better simulations, and more complex control schemes. It doesn't hurt that, at the end of 2022, a U.S. Department of Energy lab announced that it had produced a controlled fusion reaction that produced more power than the lasers had imparted to the fuel pellet. The experiment had crossed what's known as scientific breakeven, and while it's still a long ways from commercial breakeven, where the reaction produces more than the entire facility consumes, it was a long-awaited step that proved the underlying science was sound. Founders have built on that momentum in recent years, pushing the private fusion industry forward at a rapid pace. With a $1.8 billion Series B, Commonwealth Fusion Systems catapulted itself into the pole position in 2021. Since then, the company has been quiet on the fundraising front (no surprise), but it has been hard at work in Massachusetts building Sparc, its first-of-a-kind power plant intended to produce power at what it calls 'commercially relevant' levels. Sparc's reactor uses a tokamak design, which resembles a doughnut. The D-shaped cross section is wound with high-temperature superconducting tape, which when energized, generates a powerful magnetic field that will contain and compress the superheated plasma. In Sparc's successor, the commercial-scale Arc, heat generated from the reaction is converted to steam to power a turbine. CFS designed its magnets in collaboration with MIT, where co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard worked as a researcher on fusion reactor designs and high-temperature superconductors. Backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, The Engine, Bill Gates, and others, Devens, Massachusetts-based CFS expects to have Arc operational in the early 2030s. The company has raised a total of $2 billion, according to PitchBook. Founded in 1998, TAE Technologies (formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy) was spun out of the University of California, Irvine by Norman Rostoker. It uses a field-reversed configuration, but with a twist: after the two plasma shots collide in the middle of the reactor, the company bombards the plasma with particle beams to keep it spinning in a cigar shape. That improves the stability of the plasma, allowing more time for fusion to occur and for more heat to be extracted to spin a turbine. The company raised $150 million in June from existing investors, including Google, Chevron, and New Enterprise. TAE has raised $1.79 billion in total, according to PitchBook. Of all fusion startups, Helion has the most aggressive timeline. The company plans to produce electricity from its reactor in 2028. Its first customer? Microsoft. Helion, based in Everett, Washington, uses a type of reactor called a field-reversed configuration, where magnets surround a reaction chamber that looks like an hourglass with a bulge at the point where the two sides come together. At each end of the hourglass, they spin the plasma into doughnut shapes that are shot toward each other at more than 1 million mph. When they collide in the middle, additional magnets help induce fusion. When fusion occurs, it boosts the plasma's own magnetic field, which induces an electrical current inside the reactor's magnetic coils. That electricity is then harvested directly from the machine. The company raised $425 million in January 2025, around the same time that it turned on Polaris, a prototype reactor. Helion has raised $1.03 billion, according to PitchBook. Investors include Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, KKR, BlackRock, Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital Management, and Capricorn Investment Group. Pacific Fusion burst out of the gate with a $900 million Series A, a whopping sum even among well-funded fusion startups. The company will use inertial confinement to achieve fusion, but instead of lasers compressing the fuel, it will use coordinated electromagnetic pulses. The trick is in the timing: All 156 impedance-matched Marx generators need to produce 2 terawatts for 100 nanoseconds, and those pulses need to simultaneously converge on the target. The company is led by CEO Eric Lander, the scientist who led the Human Genome Project, and president Will Regan. Pacific Fusion's funding might be massive, but the startup hasn't gotten it all at once. Rather, its investors will pay out in tranches when the company achieves specified milestones, an approach that's common in biotech. Shine Technologies is taking a cautious — and possibly pragmatic — approach to generating fusion power. Selling electrons from a fusion power plant is years off, so instead, it's starting by selling neutron testing and medical isotopes. More recently, it has been developing a way to recycle radioactive waste. Shine hasn't picked an approach for a future fusion reactor, instead saying that it's developing necessary skills for when that time comes. The company has raised a total of $778 million, according to PitchBook. Investors include Energy Ventures Group, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Nucleation Capital, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Now its third-decade, General Fusion has raised $440.53 million, according to PitchBook. The Richmond, British Columbia-based company was founded in 2002 by physicist Michel Laberge, who wanted to prove a different approach to fusion known as magnetized target fusion (MTF). Investors include Jeff Bezos, Temasek, BDC Capital, and Chrysalix Venture Capital. In an General Fusion's reactor, a liquid metal wall surrounds a chamber in which plasma is injected. Pistons surrounding the wall push it inward, compressing the plasma inside and sparking a fusion reaction. The resulting neutrons heat the liquid metal, which can be circulated through a heat exchanger to generate steam to spin a turbine. General Fusion hit a rough patch in spring 2025. The company ran short of cash as it was building LM26, its latest device that it hoped would hit breakeven in 2026. Just days after hitting a key milestone, it laid off 25% of its staff. Tokamak Energy takes the usual tokamak design — the doughnut shape — and squeezes it, reducing its aspect ratio to the point where the outer bounds start resembling a sphere. Like many other tokamak-based startups, the company uses high-temperature superconducting magnets (of the rare earth barium copper oxide, or REBCO, variety). Since its design is more compact than a traditional tokamak, it requires less in the way of magnets, which should reduce costs. The Oxfordshire, UK-based startup's ST40 prototype, which looks like a large, steampunk Fabergé egg, generated an ultra-hot, 100 million degree C plasma in 2022. Its next generation, Demo 4, is currently under construction and is intended to test the company's magnets in 'fusion power plant-relevant scenarios.' Tokamak Energy raised $125 million in November 2024 to continue its reactor design efforts and expand its magnet business. In total, the company has raised $336 million from investors including Future Planet Capital, In-Q-Tel, Midven, and Capri-Sun founder Hans-Peter Wild, according to PitchBook. Zap Energy isn't using high-temperature superconducting magnets or super-powerful lasers to keep its plasma confined. Rather, it zaps the plasma (get it?) with an electric current, which then generates its own magnetic field. The magnetic field compresses the plasma about 1 millimeter, at which point ignition occurs. The neutrons released by the fusion reaction bombard a liquid metal blanket that surrounds the reactor, heating it up. The liquid metal is then cycled through a heat exchanger, where it produces steam to drive a turbine. Like Helion, Zap Energy is based in Everett, Washington, and the company has raised $327 million, according to PitchBook. Backers include Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon, Energy Impact Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Bill Gates as an angel. Most investors have favored large startups that are pursuing tokamak designs or some flavor of inertial confinement. But stellarators have shown great promise in scientific experiments, including the Wendelstein 7-X reactor in Germany. Proxima Fusion is bucking the trend, though, having attracted a €130 million Series A that brings its total raised to more than €185 million. Investors include Balderton Capital and Cherry Ventures. Stellarators are similar to tokamaks in that they confine plasma in a ring-like shape using powerful magnets. But they do it with a twist — literally. Rather than force plasma into a human-designed ring, stellarators twist and bulge to accommodate the plasma's quirks. The result should be a plasma that remains stable for longer, increasing the chances of fusion reactions. Marvel Fusion follows the inertial confinement approach, the same basic technique that the National Ignition Facility used to prove that controlled nuclear fusion reactions could produce more power than was needed to kick them off. Marvel fires powerful lasers at a target embedded with silicon nanostructures that cascade under the bombardment, compressing the fuel to the point of ignition. Because the target is made using silicon, it should be relatively simple to manufacture, leaning on the semiconductor manufacturing industry's decades of experience. The inertial confinement fusion startup is building a demonstration facility in collaboration with Colorado State University, which it expects to have operational by 2027. Munich-based Marvel has raised a total of $161 million from investors including b2venture, Deutsche Telekom, Earlybird, HV Capital, and Taavet Hinrikus and Albert Wenger as angels. First Light dropped its pursuit of fusion power in March 2025, pivoting instead to become a technology supplier to fusion startups and other companies. The startup had previously followed an approach known as inertial confinement, in which fusion fuel pellets are compressed until they ignite. First Light, which is based in Oxfordshire, U.K., has raised $140 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Invesco, IP Group, and Tencent. Though nothing about fusion can be described as simple, Xcimer takes a relatively straightforward approach: follow the basic science that's behind the National Ignition Facility's breakthrough net-positive experiment, and redesign the technology that underpins it from the ground up. The Colorado-based startup is aiming for a 10-megajoule laser system, five times more powerful than NIF's setup that made history. Molten salt walls surround the reaction chamber, absorbing heat and protecting the first solid wall from damage. Founded in January 2022, Xcimer has already raised $109 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Hedosophia, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Emerson Collective, Gigascale Capital, and Lowercarbon Capital. This story was originally published in September 2024 and will be continually updated. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
TCV cofounder Jay Hoag slams VCs' AI herd mentality: 'like 7-year-olds playing soccer'
Veteran venture capitalist Jay Hoag thinks the AI investing hype has gone too far. The TCV cofounder criticized what he sees as VCs' blind rush toward AI. "Money sort of chases momentum or follows perceived momentum," he said on an episode of the "Invest Like The Best" podcast published Tuesday. "At the risk of insult, possibly like 7-year-olds playing soccer — the ball goes over there, everybody goes over there," Hoag said. Hoag said that the hyperfocus on AI and software as a service is diverting attention and capital away from other viable sectors, especially consumer internet, which he believes still has untapped potential. AI is "super shiny" and "super interesting," he said. "I just have a hard time believing there are not going to be any new consumer internet businesses founded and built over the next 10 or 20 years," he added. "I kind of wish that the AI enthusiasm hadn't distracted everybody." Hoag has spent over four decades in tech investment. He cofounded TCV in 1995 and chairs its investment committee. The firm has backed some of Silicon Valley's biggest wins, including Netflix, Expedia, Peloton, Spotify, and Zillow. Hoag also expressed concern about the "enormous" sums poured into startups during the 2020-2021 tech boom. "I've worried a little bit about some of the 2020-2021 capital — which is an enormous sum — being, by and large, broken capital," he said. "I wish there was a little bit more modesty in our business." Hoag did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. AI hype train In the first quarter, more than half of VCs' investments went to AI and machine learning startups, per PitchBook. Last year, global investments in the sector totaled $131.5 billion, up more than 50% from 2023, PitchBook's data showed. Hoag isn't the only investor sounding the alarm bells. Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist, told Bloomberg in an interview last year that the hype surrounding AI may not meet its lofty expectations. "A lot of money is going to get wasted," Acemoglu said. Veteran VC Vinod Khosla said in 2023 that most startups were overvalued and that most investments in AI "will lose money."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Data analytics startup Coralogix doubles valuation to over $1 billion in latest funding round
By Arasu Kannagi Basil and Ateev Bhandari (Reuters) -Data analytics platform Coralogix nearly doubled its valuation to over $1 billion in its latest funding round, co-founder and CEO Ariel Assaraf told Reuters in an interview, as artificial intelligence-driven enterprise offerings continue to pique investor delight. Coralogix raised $115 million in a round led by California-based venture growth firm NewView Capital, the startup said on Tuesday. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and venture firm NextEquity also participated in the round. The fundraise comes three years after Coralogix's previous external funding in 2022, where it raised $142 million. Valuations have faced downward pressure since then, as investors continue to sit on dry powder amid elevated interest rates and geopolitical tensions. Enterprise software-as-a-service startups, however, have endured a wider slowdown in venture capital funding, with an AI gold-rush pushing SaaS financing to record $58 billion in the first quarter, according to PitchBook. Coralogix's revenue increased seven times since 2022, Assaraf told Reuters. The company, however, is yet to be profitable, with nearly 75% of its revenue in 2024 going towards research and development, according to Assaraf. "Successful companies in our space always invest a large portion of their revenue in R&D and were very late to become profitable," Assaraf added, noting a similar pathway across peers Datadog and Splunk. Startups are integrating AI-driven agents across IT development and operations as enterprises increasingly ask for all-in-one platforms to oversee their entire cloud infrastructure and processes. Coralogix expanded into AI observability with the acquisition of Aporia in December 2024. The company is aggressively looking to expand its AI talent pool, Assaraf said. "If there's a strategic acquisition of a company with a specific, very talented pool of people around AI, we will make those acquisitions, even if they're not small," he told Reuters. On Tuesday, Coralogix also unveiled its new AI agent "olly," aiming to simplify data monitoring via a conversational platform. Industry leaders have hailed AI-based agents as a transformative use case of the technology. Errore nel recupero dei dati Effettua l'accesso per consultare il tuo portafoglio Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati
